I’m very excited about a new design that I have been working on for ages. I’ve been experimenting with some neat new jewelry making techniques for spool knitting. I love Celtic Interlaces, and have designed a Celtic Interlace necklace. I’ve been working on it for a year or so, on and off.
Finally, I have finished
doing all the
photo editing
and writing
and pattern
formulating and
text editing
for the pattern.
Some designs
take a lot of work
to develop and refine,
and this is one of those ones.
But it’s worth it. I am pleased!
The Celtic Interlace Spool Knitted Necklace.
If you’re a regular visitor on Hankering for Yarn, you’ll know that  …read more

Last night, instead of going to sleep, I lay there, thinking about how wonderful the Crocheted Shadow Scarf would be if I made it with copper wire.
Sleep just went out the
window as I thought
about how
I could use the
crocheted shadow
scarf as a necklace.
I should have just gotten
up and crocheted it then,
but I lay there, squeezing
my eyelids, trying
hard to NOT think about
crochet, and longing
to be asleep…..
Eventually,
I managed to
fall asleep, but
leapt out of bed
to grab my
crochet hook
bright and
early.
I thought that
the crocheted
shadow would
work really well
with a huge lump
of amber that I had
crocheted into a wire necklace.
But.. I was surprised to discover
that it didn’t work …read more

A couple of days ago, I posted a tutorial on how to upcycle  tissue paper by spinning it into handmade yarn.
BIG tip: To set the spin on the paper yarn, squeeze the copp (the ball of yarn on the spindle)  hard with your hands while it is still on the  spindle. Voila! the twist is set.
As well as knitting
and crocheting
handspun upcycled paper yarn,
you can use flower looms
to make wonderful
flowers.
I recently broke and
then repaired my
vintage flower loom,
so am rather careful with it
nowadays.
I wasn’t sure
about how much
stress the paper yarn
would put on the flower
loom, so I made
myself a wooden one.
That’s it on …read more

The other day, I was wearing a crocheted shrug, and thought that it would be great if it had a single large button to hold it closed.
I was thinking
of one particular
vintage button
that a friend
sent me last year.
It’s kind of
translucent
and totally
wonderful.
I decided that I didn’t want to sew the button to the shrug, as that would mean that I could only enjoy it on one garment.
I thought…. why not attach a safety pin to the back of the button so I can wear it on lots of things?
I wanted the pin
to stay in one place
without glue, so
I unwound the coil,
then slipped …read more

Ugh… over the weekend, I had a scary thing happen… I had a  detachment in my left eye and a little hemorghage in the eye.
It was the pits, and has left me feeling very worn and frazzled.
When I was sitting in the doctor’s office, I was knitting a sock. There I was, with the erky drops in my eyes so they could do the tests- feeling freaked out from all the awfullizing I had been doing over being scared sideways by the weirdness going on with my eye -  and the best way to keep myself from falling completely apart …read more

There is something just sooooooooooo magical about buttons.  It seems to me that buttons have the capacity to tell stories.
The buttons in this photo came from a second hand store in Quebec City (including the 6 inch diameter ancestral photo ‘buttons’):
Many of the buttons have gone back to Québec City, as I used them to embellish a handmade book that I made for a dear friend in Québec City. And, she will fill the book with her poems, and I am willing to bet that she will hear the whispered stories that the buttons are imbued with.
Another friend gave me …read more

Project Spectrum is a very neat ongoing online crafting project  that Lolly began on her blog: Project Spectrum
There’s a Flickr group and a Ravelry group, too.
It’s all about creativity and being inspired by specific ‘triggers’.  The leaping off points for May and June are the following:

EAST (May/June)
Color: Yellow
Material: Wood
Season: Spring
Element: Air
We have had the longest winter ever, and a late and cold and miserable springtime.
This means that we are sadly lacking flowers outside right now.
Bless the sturdy little dandelion that braved the cold and popped up outside my window.
In order to get flowers, I have to make them myself.
Here’s a …read more

One of the members of the Tatta-Tat-Tatters group on Ravelry was exploring options for attaching tatting to fabric.
Lots of suggestions were made, and at one point, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I suggested that he use duct tape to attach the tatting.
Immediately, that brought up all kinds of crazy ideas and one thing lead to another…. and, well, before you know it, I had issued a challenge.
It’s an odd one….. How can you combine duct tape and tatting in the same piece?
There are no rules, (well, there is one rule: You have to combine tatting and duct …read more

Happy Almost Earth Day!
I hope you have had a wonderful day that included lots of lovely green living
and eco projects, and that you are going to do something special for Earth Day tomorrow.
We are going to plant some baby trees.  That’s them in the pic to the right.
The Spool knitter is one that I made from a chunk of old wood that we found in Jim’s Dad’s workshop 10 or so years ago. Jim’s Dad was a champion recycler.
He would upcycle stuff in the neatest ways…. nothing much got thrown away around Mum and Dad’s house. If it could be …read more

Today, I was asked a question about working with copper wire.
The questioner had just gotten a fab deal on 24 gauge copper wire and snapped it up.
When she experimented with crocheting it, she found it to be not very pleasant to work with.  24 gauge is pretty energized, and fairly stiff.
Crocheting with it is mighty tough on the tendons.
She had seen that someone else had asked me to make them sturdy spool knitters for spool knitting wire and wondered if  the 24 gauge could be spool knitted.
Why would you spool knit wire?
Because you can make absolutely gorgeous jewelry with it!  …read more